


What Endures

by devovere



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, American Politics, Gen, Long Live Feedback Comment Project, Native American Character(s), Period-Typical Racism, Police Brutality, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Siblings, Second Mesa Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2018-08-23
Packaged: 2019-07-01 07:30:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15769437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devovere/pseuds/devovere
Summary: Sekaya confronts Kathryn with the best of intentions.





	What Endures

**Author's Note:**

  * For [emmadelosnardos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmadelosnardos/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Second Mesa](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14766353) by [emmadelosnardos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmadelosnardos/pseuds/emmadelosnardos). 



> This story takes place midway through [chapter 11 of “Second Mesa,”](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14766353/chapters/35705808) on the Saturday following Kathryn's brief visit to Chakotay's house, several weeks after Sedona. It contains spoilers for “Second Mesa” through chapter 11. 
> 
> My warm admiration goes to [emmadelosnardos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmadelosnardos/pseuds/emmadelosnardos). She not only wrote a brutally compelling AU fic that is just too damn relevant and relatable for anyone’s comfort; she not only let me yell at her when her Kathryn Janeway pissed me off, encouraged me to fictionalize my feelings about the whole mess, and then wrote my story into her own in a later chapter … 
> 
> She also beta-read her own gift fic. 
> 
> Sincere thanks also to [TheShorty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheShorty/pseuds/TheShorty), who PM’d me off a ledge when I needed it and then, as a beta-reader, pushed this story to a new edge. 
> 
> Any remaining errors, of course, are my own.

“So that’s it? You’re letting her stay on?” Sekaya knew she sounded pissed and didn’t care. She stood before her brother where he had collapsed on the couch, arms crossed over her chest, letting her anger surface to keep her fear held inside. 

“Letting her? I didn’t hire her. I can’t fire her.” He sounded exhausted. 

“The hell you can’t. You told me if things went bad between you two she’d leave the clinic. She can’t even keep her word on that?” 

The shift in the line of his shoulders signaled guilt on top of dejection. She exhaled suddenly, a huff of disbelief, and put her hands on her hips. 

“My God, Chakotay. You aren’t breaking up. Are you.” 

He didn’t meet her eyes, only tightened his lips. Silence stretched between them, along the same threads that tied them together as kin. 

Finally he muttered, “I don’t know what we’re doing. I just don’t want her to leave.” 

She whirled away from him and shoved her things from the countertop into her bag. The tightness in her chest soured, seeping down into her gut. Her hands finished their task and went flat on the counter, pressing down as if to smother the things unspoken here, as if to hold her upright. 

Then the weight on her shoulders was not metaphorical, for Chakotay’s large hands were turning her to face him. 

She stared into his eyes for a long moment. 

“Please, ‘Kaya,” he urged. For a moment, he let her see the tormented loneliness he’d lived with so long. “I need you to understand.” 

As if she didn’t. 

She bit back several responses, each more true than the last. 

_ I understand she must be damn good in bed.  _

_ I understand the lure of that paleness, that privilege.  _

_ I understand the gravity of a life half over, of an empty house.  _

Gently, she lifted his hands from her shoulders and held them in her own. His face softened. 

He thought he’d won. 

Her voice was granite under whisper-soft feathers. “There are things  _ she _ needs to understand, too.” 

With that, she dropped his hands and strode for the door, lifting the strap of her bag across her body as she went. 

“Sekaya?” he called after her. “Where are you going?” 

She didn’t turn back. This wasn’t his business now. 

This was between her and Kathryn Janeway. 

 

* * *

 

I was putting groceries away at my Flagstaff house when the doorbell rang. My heart leapt with irrational hope; I hadn’t seen Chakotay since our staff meeting on Wednesday, hadn’t really spoken with him since my disastrous visit to his house last weekend. 

I quickly checked my phone; he would have texted before dropping by. No messages. Probably a neighbor kid selling something for school. I sighed, walked through the courtyard, and opened the outer door. 

Sekaya stood just outside the door, chin raised and eyes stern. 

Fear gripped me. “Has something happened to Chakotay?” I blurted out. 

The  cynicism that crossed her face made me flinch. 

“Now that’s a loaded question,” she said. “Let me in. We need to talk.” 

\-----

She declined my offer of a drink and ignored my gesture towards a seat in the living room. Still, once she was in my space she seemed to hesitate, taking in her surroundings. 

I spoke first. “What brings you to Flagstaff?” 

She turned from the wall where she was studying a painting and snorted. “You. You and my brother. There are some things you don’t seem to understand.” 

“He sent you? All the way here?” I asked coldly. 

“No, he has no idea I’m here.” She waved away my accusation with disdain. “And trust me, honey, neither of us wants my cousin Miranda asking about this visit.”

I looked at her stonily, arms crossed on my chest. “All right. What’s on your mind that you’ll drive all this way to ambush me on a Saturday?” 

She raised an eyebrow. “Ambush? You think I’m going to scalp you too?” 

I felt my eyes narrow. “Don’t, Sekaya. Don’t read racism into innocent words.” 

She studied me for a moment. “That’s the trouble with you white ladies, you know. You always claim innocence, and you’re always believed.” 

“Look, I don’t know what I’ve done to offend you -- aside from being white -- but if Chakotay didn’t send you, why are you here? I have better things to do with my day off than listen to you hurling insults at me.” 

“Right, your day off. The clinics keep you busy, huh? Full calendar of poor brown folks to fix up?” 

I said steadily, “I know you wouldn’t demean my work in that manner if Kolopak were still the one doing it.” Sekaya flinched; I’d landed a blow. “What’s your point?” 

“My father was here for the long haul.  _ He  _ spent his whole life helping our people. How long are you going to stick around?” 

“I have no plans to leave.” 

“But do you have plans to  _ stay _ , Doctor?” 

Suddenly my need to know overwhelmed my restraint. “What did Chakotay tell you? Does he want me to stay?” I bit my tongue. That sounded downright needy. 

“My brother doesn’t know what he wants. You’re too deep in his head for him to see this thing clearly. But that’s a problem for him to sort out. I’m here to ask you about your intentions towards my community.”

“I chose this work and was hired to do it,” I said flatly. “My intentions are to do the best job I can for the population we serve. I’m frankly offended you would suspect otherwise.” 

She looked skyward, exasperated with me. “Do I look like the NIH? I’m not conducting a performance review,  _ Dr. Janeway _ . I’m not interested in your charts and your budget numbers. And I’m not talking about a ‘population.’ That’s a science term. We are a people. A community. You’re an outsider.” 

“Yes, I’m well aware, thank you!” I was even more angry with myself for letting a tremor creep into my voice than I was with her for pushing all my buttons, one after another. “What do you  _ want  _ from me, Sekaya? I can’t help who I am. But I’m here, aren’t I? How many outsiders are showing up and trying to help?”  _ Shit _ , I thought, recognizing too late words I’d spoken almost verbatim in Chakotay’s truck three weeks ago. 

“We have always had white people trying to help. What do you think colonialism is, in between the outright wars? But times are precarious again, trying to figure out who the harmless ones are.” 

She read the bafflement on my face and cocked her head sideways. “Took my dog to the vet last week. Trump stickers on half the cars in the lot. All those nice ladies in the office, acting so sweet. Makes you look a little harder at the people you thought you knew.” 

I rolled my eyes. “Trump is a pig who brags about sexual assault. Even without Hillary to vote for, there's no way women will --”  

“Don’t be so sure of that. Look at the footage of his rallies. Count the women. They’re there. They’re  _ with  _ their men. Yet you want me to trust you won’t be too in the end?” 

“How  _ dare _ you suggest I would ever vote for a cretin like -- “

“Voting’s the least of it. Look where you live now. Trump will carry Arizona. Your conscience in the voting booth is your concern; it doesn’t touch on what I’m saying here.”

“Then what are you saying, Sekaya? That since I’m white I’ll betray your people? Betray Chakotay?” 

“You already did!” 

I took a sharp breath, preparing to argue further. Then it clicked. “Sedona? He told you?” 

A disbelieving shake of her head. “Yes, he told me. This morning. I told him you’d shown your true stripes, that he’d been a fool to expect anything better from someone like you. Your actions could get him killed.” 

“Killed?” I stared in confusion. “No -- the men were walking away, they didn’t even notice me. I didn’t do anything to escalate --”

“Bullshit, Kathryn. You told him you almost called the police. You insisted he should call them.” 

“Those assholes assaulted him! They should have been arrested, not left walking free to target other --”

She spoke with a maddeningly patient tone, as if explaining something basic to a child. “Those assholes were  _ white _ . In Arizona.”

“That doesn’t necessarily mean -- “

“Yes. It fucking does. At the very least the risk is there. That the wrong cop gets involved and then my brother is the one in handcuffs.” Her voice became a knife blade. “Or maybe just shot dead where he stands.” 

Both hands covered my mouth at the image.  _ She doesn’t know _ , I reminded myself.  _ She doesn’t know about Rio _ . My heart started pounding in my ears. 

“You’ve heard of Black Lives Matter? Of course you have. I bet you went to a die-in there in Berkeley. Donated money, anyway. Retweeted some hashtags.” 

My voice was pitched low, a warning flag.  _ Stay away _ . “You have no idea what I’ve seen. As --” I took a deep breath, almost gulping oxygen. Struggled to discipline my thoughts, stay professional. “ -- As a physician. I know how racism kills my patients. I work against it every way I can.” 

“You know...what? Statistics? Maybe a few names? Tell me, Kathryn. How many black people are killed by cops every year? How many cops are even charged with a crime?”

“What. Is your point.” I ground out. 

“How about a question that relates directly to your ‘patient population’, Dr. Janeway of the IHS?” Sekaya’s fingers twitched in the air, mimicking quotation marks. “How many Native Americans do the police kill every year?” 

I said nothing, my lips drawn tight, jaw clenched until it hurt. I didn’t know the answer, but Sekaya had clearly been banking on that. She stared me down, refusing to be the first to break her gaze, refusing to let me break mine.

The softness of her next words took me by surprise. “More than you know, Kathryn. Police murder Indians at significantly higher rates than any other race.”

A beat. The dagger in my heart again, cold fear for Chakotay, then blazing resentment at being pigeonholed, thought sheltered, I who had seen -- who had held -- 

“I -- … that can’t be right,” I stammered. 

“Nothing  _ right _ about it, but it’s a cold hard fact. One you need to wrap your head around real fast. You need to ask yourself how you can specialize in indigenous medicine or whatever the fancy term is at Stanford and not have known this fact. Because I know it. We all know it here on the reservation. We knew it before we saw the numbers. We know it from our stories and the graves on our land.” 

She was relentless, her voice growing louder with every sentence, filling my ears, adrenaline making me light-headed. 

“Your fear, your white-lady feelings -- you bring cop guns to bear on us. You don’t pull the trigger; you wouldn’t want our blood on your pretty white hands. Doesn’t matter when our men are dying in the dirt.” 

 

_ Sekaya’s words are lost to me in gunfire _

_ screams in Portuguese _

_ my father’s death rattle, his blue eyes pleading, terrified, agonized _

_ so much blood, no trauma kit _

_ my hands against the wounds in his neck, in his chest _

_ spurting scarlet _

_ Justin still and silent  _

_ crimson widening beneath his skull _

 

_ Their blood on my hands _

_ Their blood on my hands _

**_Their blood on my hands_ ** **…**

 

Silence. I blinked. My palms before my face. A wall at my back. 

“Kathryn.” Her voice above me, quiet now. 

I was sitting on the floor.  _ When did that happen? _

“Kathryn?” She sounded … concerned. I looked up. 

Sekaya offered me her hand. Brown skin hovering above my own pale pink and cream. I blinked, saw blood drip down both wrists. Blinked again. It vanished. 

I still felt it. Coating me. 

Not touching her, not looking at her, I lowered my hands and pushed myself upward, my back sliding against the wall. When my weight was steady again on my feet, I turned and walked numbly to the courtyard door, pulled it open, and stood silently with my back to Sekaya. Waiting. 

She hesitated as she moved past me. I bit my lip and closed my eyes, waiting for some cutting remark, her parting shot. 

_ She can’t hurt me now _ , I thought. _ I’ve already bled out.  _

I realized she was gone when I heard a car engine start and then recede in the distance. 

I closed the door.

 

* * *

 

As Sekaya began the long drive home from Flagstaff, she wasn’t feeling the vindication she’d expected to feel. 

Janeway had reacted just as she’d expected her to … until she hadn’t. 

Sekaya had been prepared for defensiveness. Anger. Wounded tears and playing the victim. 

She’d halfway hoped that confronting Kathryn so baldly would get her to quit Second Mesa outright. The tribe didn’t need would-be saviors who crumbled under the pressure of a little truth-telling. 

And yes, she wasn’t above trying to drive a lasting wedge between Kathryn and her brother. Chakotay had it bad for that lady. She’d never seen him so torn up about a woman, and it seemed it had been going on a whole lot longer than they’d let on to anyone. A clean break--including Kathryn’s departure--would be in his best interests, she felt sure. 

Weird for a doctor to be so squeamish. A little talk of blood and she … checked out. Sekaya had just worked up a good head of steam when Kathryn backed into the wall and slid down it. The couch had been between them; Sekaya hadn't had a clear view and thought at first the other woman had crumpled in a melodramatic display of white fragility. 

But when she’d rounded the furniture and approached from the side, Sekaya had seen that Kathryn didn't have her face in her hands as she’d thought. Nor was she weeping. She just looked pale and blank, staring at her hands with no sign of recognition. No reaction when Sekaya stopped haranguing her, nor the first time she said Kathryn's name. 

In the silence, standing over the small folded form, Sekaya had suddenly felt like an intruder. An invader in someone's home, unwelcome witness to another's weakness. 

_ ‘Ina raised us to stand up to cruelty _ , she had thought. _ Not to inflict it. _ And the thought even now brought a surge of confused resentment, so strong she wasn’t even sure who it was aimed at. 

When Kathryn had turned her back to Sekaya, kept it turned even as she'd silently shown her out, Sekaya’s shame and unaccustomed doubt had somehow carried her through the door. She’d wanted to say something to Kathryn as she left, make some kind of apology, build some kind of bridge, but the other woman wouldn’t even look at her. 

“I tried,” Sekaya said out loud in the car. She had tried. 

In the living room, standing over her, she'd offered Kathryn Janeway her hand. Had reached out in silent concern, meaning to lift her up, to … 

Sekaya didn't know what, exactly, she'd meant by the gesture. But it was clear enough what Kathryn had meant by refusing it. Sekaya had seen the fear and revulsion on her face. 

_ She wouldn't touch me.  _

“How do you figure that?” she mused aloud to her hands on the steering wheel. “I’m no more brown than my brother. And she sure didn’t mind touching him.” 

An echo of righteous anger flared within her again. “He’s better off without her.” 

And it went without saying, not even to herself, that they were all better off if Chakotay didn’t know what Sekaya had done. 

**Author's Note:**

> Woodard, Stephanie. [“The Police Killings No One Is Talking About.”](https://inthesetimes.com/features/native_american_police_killings_native_lives_matter.html) _In These Times_. October Issue, October 17, 2016. Inthesetimes . com / features / native_american_police_killings_native_lives_matter . html (Accessed August 20, 2018)
> 
> Woodard writes: “When compared to their percentage of the U.S. population, Natives were more likely to be killed by police than any other group, including African Americans.”
> 
> African Americans are over 12% of the U.S population; Native Americans are 2%. So in terms of raw numbers, more blacks than Indians are killed every year. But in proportional terms, even more of the Indian population than of the black population is killed. 
> 
> =====
> 
> This story is part of the [LLF Comment Project](https://longlivefeedback.tumblr.com/llfcommentproject), which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. I invite and appreciate feedback, including:
> 
>   * Short comments
>   * Long comments
>   * Questions
>   * Constructive criticism
>   * <3 as extra kudos
>   * Reader-reader interaction
> 

> 
> [LLF Comment Builder](https://longlivefeedback.tumblr.com/post/170952243543/now-presenting-the-llf-comment-builder-beta) may be a useful resource for some. 
> 
> I reply to comments. That means you can expect me to reply to your comment, eventually and barring unforeseen circumstances. (Once in a while I miss or don't receive a notification, for example.) 
> 
> If you _don’t_ want a reply, for any reason, feel free to sign your comment with “whisper.” I will appreciate it but not respond.


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